Owing to their numerous well-known advantages of lightness, strength and free running abrasion resistance qualities, double braided lines are widely used by many people such as yacht or boat owners, riggers, mountaineers and ranchers. Particularly in the nautical and marine arts, it often becomes necessary or desirable to splice an eye in the line.
The conventional method of forming an eye splice in a double braided line involves pulling the core of the line out of the sheath and feeding the end of the core back into the sheath in the opposite direction using a fid and a pusher. The end of the sheath is buried in the exposed portion of the core using the fid and pusher a second time and the exposed portion of the core and crossover are buried in the sheath by alternately pulling the various line components.
The fid which has been known heretofore is a rigid stick having one hollow end and one pointed end. The pointed end of the fid is tunneled through the center of the core or sheath and the end of the sheath or core, respectively, is pushed into the hollow end of the fid. The pusher is a rod which holds the end of the sheath or core in the hollow end of the fid and is used to push the fid and end of the sheath or core through the core or sheath, respectively.
This arrangement suffers from numerous disadvantages, one being that a different diameter fid must be provided for the different line diameters. It is necessary to provide a separate fid for each line carried on the vessel, and loss of one size fid can create a significant and annoying problem. Naturally, a set of fids is more expensive than one fid which would suffice for all line sizes. Another problem is that the end of the core or sheath in the hollow end of the fid tends to detach during passage through the sheath or core, respectively. Further, a fid of this design must be of the same diameter as the line since the end of the sheath must fit in the hollow end of the fid, and the fid is hard to push through the core. In summary, the conventional fid and pusher make eye splicing of doubled braided lines a difficult and often frustrating experience.